Japanese Examined Patent Publication No. 7-118756, for example, discloses an image formation parameter correction apparatus of the general type that is the subject matter of the present application. This Japanese publication teaches a color image forming apparatus that reads in a prescribed color test pattern via a scanner, and corrects image formation parameters such as color registration, thereby preventing color mis-registration or the like.
In today's widespread distributed processing networks, network configurations with a plurality of image forming apparatuses are not uncommon. In such configurations, consistency in image quality from one image forming apparatus to the next is desired.
In the prior art, however, correction operations such as that referenced above in Japanese Examined Publication No. 7-118756 must be performed for each individual image forming apparatus, and performing such correction operations on each apparatus is time consuming. In particular, because of inherent variations among the respective image forming apparatuses (i.e., variations in the image scanning sensors), reading the same test pattern into each apparatus results in image quality variations in the scanned test pattern, which prevents uniform adjustment of the image formation parameters.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an image formation parameter correction apparatus that facilitates uniform adjustment of image quality between a plurality of image forming apparatuses.